


Games Adults Play

by pallidiflora



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Adultery, M/M, Post-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-24
Updated: 2011-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-30 06:35:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/328840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pallidiflora/pseuds/pallidiflora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This part is the worst of all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Games Adults Play

**Author's Note:**

  * For [forparadise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forparadise/gifts).



> For Sarah. Merry Christmas, mushroom!

 

They—Cid and Shera—decide to have Vincent over for dinner on Saturday. It is _they_ now, not _he and she_ , nothing separate, the _royal we_ of marriage. This is one of the inevitabilities of married life, being thought of as a singular unit, but also a privilege— _they_ and _we_ are badges of honour. Vincent tries not to let the pronouns rankle.  
  
He arrives with typical punctuality at five o'clock, in time for pre-dinner cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. This is the idea, anyway, but Cid ends up having a beer, and Vincent declines anything to drink as Shera sets out meatballs and pickles on cocktail sticks. She still has bread baking—a literal "bun in the oven", a phrase which makes her ears turn red—and she apologizes for this, fretting over her unpreparedness.  
  
"Vincent don't care, do you, Vincent?" Cid says. He might have said "Vincent don't give a shit" once upon a time; he has softened now, Vincent sees. He makes passing attempts at gentility, like men in old shaving cream ads; he wears cologne when he remembers, and compliments her cooking. He buys her earrings for her birthdays, though they are not ones of his choosing, instead picked out by helpful saleswomen. The effect is something like a little boy putting on his father's shoes and tie.  
  
It makes Vincent's throat tight.  
  
Shera brings dinner out—a pork roast and potatoes, real red-blooded rib-sticking things—and he wonders if they will have children. He thinks about them _aging gracefully_ together, as the saying goes, Shera with matronly lipsticks and sensible shoes and Cid with steel-rimmed glasses and heavy woollen slacks. He wants to be happy for them.  
  
Instead he nods at her as she brings out vanilla-frosted cake and coffee and a bottle of whiskey—he would like to smile, but doesn't. Shera assumes this is just his way, though she still asks "I hope white cake is okay, Vincent?", unsure.  
  
The cake is fine, of course, though sweeter than he likes.  
  


* * *

  
Cid and Vincent talk in the living room while Shera does the dishes—Vincent offers to help, but she waves him away. He can see her through the closed French doors, her image distorted by the glass; she is humming to herself, but he can't hear.  
  
He would like her better if she had a mean mouth. He would like her better if she scorned him, disdained him, if she saw right through him. Instead she is diminished, glasses and ponytails and ratty labcoats, sudsy hands in yellow gloves plunging into dirty dishwater, a no-make-up face, old tubes of mascara crusting with disuse in a drawer. She is endearing. He tries not to see it, but there is something of Lucrecia in her, though younger, smaller.  
  
Above all, Vincent pities her, and hates himself for it. His pity is the last thing she needs.  
  
Cid is draining his lowball of whiskey—a little buzzed, maybe, but nowhere near drunk yet.  
  
"Let's go out somewhere," he says, and the sentence is rife with promise, with suggestion. "There's an okay bar just around the corner."  
  
Vincent is meant to recognize the underlying innuendo, and does; this is why the doors are closed, though Shera—grey dishwater Shera, after-dinner whiskey Shera, pitiable Shera—wouldn't notice anyway. This part is the worst of all.  
  


* * *

  
They go to a hotel, a typical Rocket Town sort of place: a bathroom with clanking bronze pipes, a maple bedstead, a quilt, thin and nubbly, everything quaintly aged, glazed with a bucolic patina. The woman at the front desk just drops the key, tarnished from fingers, into Cid's palm, saying nothing; _ask me no questions, I'll you no lies_.  
  
Vincent stands in the middle of the wood-panelled room, rustic, innocuous, and Cid breathes against his ear, "I wanna fuck you."  
  
There. He makes no effort at decorousness with Vincent, at kindness, perhaps because he thinks Vincent doesn't need it, or perhaps just because Shera is out of earshot—again, there is the little boy, this time defiant, with a sticky mouth and scabby knees.  
  
He imagines Cid and Shera fucking—or perhaps copulating, or _making love_ , Shera with flyaway untied hair, unsure, trying not to be too loud or too silent, trying not to smell, trying to please without taking up too much space. He would not say "I wanna fuck you".  
  
To say he and Cid _make love_ would be too cloying, too sentimental; _love-making_ is something he imagined doing with Lucrecia, her hair fanned out on a lace-edged pillow, her mouth pink and inviting—he would have looked at her face. It seems ridiculous now, like something out of an old movie, all soft-focus and misty edges.  
  
So it's not making love. Instead, Cid fucks him, as he intended to do.  
  
Cid undresses. He doesn't yet have the paunch of most men his age, the wispy transparent chest hairs, the greying temples; "I ain't gone soft yet," is what Cid would say if Vincent asked, but he doesn't. He has folksy remedies his father taught him for these things anyway: blackstrap molasses or vinegar in the morning, cold showers, a shot of bourbon at night. Bracing things, the stuff of wartime and rationing. It's probably all bullshit, but it has a no-nonsense appeal.  
  
Vincent does not undress. Instead, he just shucks his pants down; to undress further would be to invest. This way he can pretend it's no-strings-attached, a simple suck-and-fuck affair, the kind of thing he has never done, will never be able to do.  
  
He watches Cid's face as Cid pushes inside him, the vee of his collarbones, his stomach flexing, biceps tensing, his jaw clenched, mouth curving downwards. Lying on his back with his knees to his chest, hands on Cid's ass, the box spring creaking, headboard hitting the wall, Vincent pretends, and rationalizes. He justifies.  
  


* * *

 

On the train ride home, Vincent sits running his tongue over his teeth; they feel fuzzy, sugar-coated, soft and white as vanilla frosting. He longs for a toothbrush.


End file.
